Thoughts on GOD and TRUTH
(found somewhere in the middle of ultra-conservatism and flaming liberalism)

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Thought of the Day !!

At dawn
[Jesus] appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered
around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the
Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the
group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of
adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you
say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis
for accusing him.

But Jesus
bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on
questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you
who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped
down and wrote on the ground.

At this,
those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until
only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up
and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?"

"No
one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus
declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

John 8:2-11
(TNIV)

The biblical
word for cheating on one's wife or husband is adultery. And it's frowned
on heavily by God. As a matter of fact, the prohibition of it made it
into the Ten Commandments (number 7). The reason God abhors it so much is
that it ruins the relationship between a man and a woman. And God's
greatest desire is for us to have relationships…relationships with each other
and with Him.

In our
Scripture reading the Pharisees bring a woman who has been caught in the act of
adultery to Jesus and ask him point blank…what do you say that we should do
with her? On one hand, the Law of Moses says to stone her. On the
other hand, Roman law prevented this kind of punishment.

And then
there's the fact that if he said, "Let her go", the Pharisees could
say that he didn't adhere to Jewish Law. Of course if he said to stone
her, he would go against everything he taught.

What was he
to do? He simply wrote in the dirt (maybe the question – where's the
man). And when pressed, he gave an answer that's like one of those great
lines from an old movie. One that will last forever in people's
memories…kind of like Frankly my dear Scarlet…or I don't think we're in Kansas
anymore Toto…or of all the gin joints in all the…. He said, "He that
is without sin cast the first stone." And that line has been
repeated over and over through the centuries.

Wow!
What could they do? Uhhhh Ummm! Can you imagine them looking
at each other. "You do it. No, you do it." Then one
by one, beginning with the oldest (probably because they were the wisest) they
dropped their deadly weapons and slunk away. Even they weren't
hypocritical enough to claim that any of them were without sin.

When all the
Pharisees were gone, Jesus asked the woman, "Where are your accusers?
Didn't even one of them condemn you?" "No", she
replied. And then we hear those wonderful words of grace, "Neither
do I. Go and sin no more."

The original
Greek means that Jesus deferred judgment. He didn't say to her,
"Forget it. It's no big deal." What he meant was: "I
am not going to pass judgment on you now. Go out and live a different
life and do what you can to become a different person."

In a round
about way, isn't that what he's told you before? I know I've heard those
words before. He says to us, I don't condemn you. Instead, I
forgive you. Now, I want you to change and try to become the person
you're meant to be. At that point...it's up to us.